After a couple of weeks, John Chow was so far ahead of everyone else that Jony issued a specific contest to see if anyone could challenge John Chow for the most referrals.  John Chow proceeded to beat himself with no one else even close.  The second place guy was Shoemoney just for the record.

There are a couple of very specific reasons John Chow will always win referral contests. In no particular order:

1. John Chow has followers that convert and take actions

Many people have tons of followers.  Some have e-mail lists several times larger than John, but John’s readers convert.  In order to win these contests, you need a following that listens to you and trusts you.  About half a year back, John unfollowed everyone on his twitter account (nearly 60,000 people).  In the process he lost about 10,000 followers, but now the people who are following him are legit followers who click and convert.

2. John Chow bribes his readers (and his bribes are usually pretty sick)

John can go buy an iPad with what he makes in an hour; it isn’t about the prize, it’s about the pride of winning.  Instead of keeping the prizes for himself he offers to give the prize to one of his readers if he wins.

Even when there isn’t a contest, John offers another ridiculously huge perk to buying from him: free review/ad space.  On more than one occasion, as an incentive for buying from him, John will give the buyer a free review or ad space on his site.  From a CPC standpoint, many of the products are worth buying just for the “free” review.  Furthermore, John’s traffic converts, so it’s better than random AdSense traffic even if the CPC is the same.

3. John is blunt about his motives and disclosure

The top to referrers in Jony Volk’s contest had one very similar trait: they don’t pull punches, and they tell you what they are doing.  They don’t care if they offend you or make you mad (that weeds out the bad leads and freeloaders).  Both John Chow and Shoemoney tell you to leave if you’re offended being asked to things for them.  Just another reason John Chow’s traffic converts.

4. The sites with a big enough reader base don’t participate

In order to beat John Chow, you would need a massive traffic advantage over him.  Blogs like Problogger (which still might not have enough traffic), Mashable, Lifehacker, Tech Crunch, MakeUseOf, Smashing, etc.. don’t tend to make their money from affiliate referral programs like John Chow.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they don’t sell things or make money from affiliate deals, but I couldn’t imagine seeing any of those sites participating in a referral contests.

Also, most of those sites have multiple contributors.  I don’t think splitting an iPad six ways would work very well.  Maybe each author could use it every 6th week?

John Chow Owns Referral Period

When it comes down to it, John Chow has readers that convert and more to bribe readers with.  If I can get a $500+ value (a review on JC’s webpage plus a JC tweet promoting the article) for buying a $500 product that kicks ass anyway, guess whose referral link I’m clicking?

The biggest downside for the contest host to this is many people may be discouraged by John’s tight grip on the referral competition.  One way to make it more fair is to offer multiple winners and/or random winners.  Another good option is to give John Chow a handicap.  Maybe if John had to send over 4 times as many referrals, others might have a chance at winning.

Is anyone up to the challenge to beating John Chow?

Image Credit: Image was taken from JC’s About page.

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Many of the “Super Affiliates” around the web have blogs keeping tabs on their success and giving out little half-useful tips on how to be successful in the affiliate marketing world; however, few give step by step directions on how to get moving (you usually have to pay $97 for that!).

Enter Super Affiliate Jonathan Volk. Unlike many of the super “baller” affiliates, Jony isn’t just in the game to make money for his Ferrari’s and mansions; instead he’s serious about helping others to be successful.  His faith filled and ethical perspective is refreshing in a niche full of scam artist and virtual thieves.

Jony’s Affiliate Marketing Guide is divided into 17 clearly defined sections which makes for an awesome straight through read or a fast reference guide.  The original version of the guide was written to be read entirely online (which kicks tooshie for those of us who like to read on our phones, but don’t have an app to read PDFs).  It also makes it easy to navigate to any section via the table of contents.  A PDF version was also released, but I still recommend reading it online.

This guide covers affiliate marketing in a simple to understand way that even a complete tech newbie with no affiliate marketing knowledge can grasp.  While most guides that cover a topic in such depth can be extremely boring for advanced users, Jony does a great job delivering his message with brevity.

Affiliate Marketing Basics

The first 8 sections cover the basic ideas of what affiliate marketing is and how to get setup.  He mentions everything from how to get plugged in to an affiliate network to setting up a domain and hosting (if necessary).  He even designates the importance of domain name choice depending on the type of marketing you plan to do.

Design of Affiliate Marketing

Sections 9 through 11 start to turn the focus more toward the more technical side of affiliate marketing including PHP redirects, landing pages, and stat tracking.  While these sections are no where near comprehensive, they are sufficient for understanding the importance and purpose of each critical part.

Affiliate Marketing Channels

Perhaps the most useful information comes in sections 12 through 15.  Jony details how to setup Social Media, Pay Per View (PPV), Pay Per Click (PPC), and Media Buying campaigns.  Each section covers one of the marketing styles mentioned above with details on: landing page requirement, effective offer types, ideas for effective marketing, and much more.

The final two sections bring the guide to a close by mentioning the most important advice of all: this is a trial and error learning process.  Making money affiliate marketing is not a simple walk in the park, and it requires time, patience, and attention to detail to be successful.  The biggest way to lose is to give up before you really let things play out.

Free PPV Webinar With Corey Bornmann and David Ford

Finally, a FREE bonus to the already amazing free ebook is a 90+ minute webinar with the creators of AffPortal.  These guys give some juicy tips and step by step information on how to setup killer PPV campaigns.  While they do plug their product in the demo, it is completely justified with the amazing step by step demo they give for free.

I’ve read a ton of free reports, ebooks, and watched a bunch of free videos.  These two are without a doubt the two I wish I had come across first.  If you don’t read another single free ebook for the rest of the year, please make sure you check out Jony Volk’s Affiliate Marketing Guide.  You won’t regret it!

Photo Credit: emrank

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The Online Marketing Blog, TopRankBlog.com, is one of the best places to go to learn about all forms of online marketing ranging from search and SEO to social media.

Top Rank Online Marketing Blog

Site: www.toprankblog.com

Contributors: Lee Odden (CEO), Julie Brue, Jolina Pettice, Adam Singer, Thomas McHahon, Michelle Bowles, and Mike Yanke

Online since: Feb 2005

Page Rank: 6

Ad Age Rank: Top 10 (currently 9)

Alexa Rank: 9,114

Inbound Links: 174, 946 (source: websitegrader.com)

Pageviews per month: 1.1 million (source: Google Ad Planner)

Feedburner Subscribers: 27,543

Design and Layout

The design of the site doesn’t even slightly represent the quality of content.  In fact, I’ve personally skipped past this blog more than once due to its appearance.

The site doesn’t have a distinguishable logo or banner, and the layout looks like a free 3 column theme you can download anywhere.  The sidebars feel cluttered with badges which makes the site uninviting.  Don’t let the amateur look fool you into judging this blog by its cover; this site is packed so full of content it’s hard to stop reading.

Amazing Online Marketing Content

If you have even the slightest interest in online marketing, scanning through the Top Rank Blog archives will make your heart flutter.  As I mentioned before, they cover a huge variety of online marketing topics including: Blogging, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media, and more.

Don’t mistake TopRankBlog for a simple Make Money Online blog.  They do cover MMO and so much more.  If you have a business doing any marketing online you’ll find amazing tips, how-to’s, and lists to make you more successful and give you a better understanding of what you’re doing.

One of the best offerings on TopRankBlog are the BIGLIST updates.  Every so often, they post a list of the best SEO/SEM blogs on the net.  If you’ve having a hard time finding reliable resources covering search topics, the BIGLISTs are a great place to start.

I’ve always believed it’s hard to have a successful blog without a professional appearance, but  Top Rank Online Marketing Blog proves once again that badass content can still be king.

If you’re ready to get some seriously good online marketing advice, look no further than Top Rank Online Marketing Blog.

Image Credit: Chris.Merwe’s Flickr

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For the last couple of months I have been doing liquor tastings and demos at stores all over the DFW metroplex.  I’ve also done promotions for some other companies like I.O. Metro handing out flyers and waving people in and even for Frito Lays handing out Sunchips. (yummy!)

This got me thinking about what really works for marketing both online and offline.

From what I have seen, interaction has a much greater impact on people than putting a sign in front of someone.  Much like those 125×125 ads most of us have on our blogs, the majority of people never even notice a sign for flyer (or notice it, but don’t respond).

Teaching someone to make a drink while they are shopping for liquor is powerful.  The conversion rate for people who take the time to let me teach them to make a Cubra Libre or a Mojito is amazingly high because the people sampling and learning have a time investment, and I have built personal trust for the brand.

You’ve probably been at a bar or club where shot girls were handing out samples, but how often do you buy more?  The demos we run have a 30-50% conversion rate (some higher).  That’s better spent money in my book.

The liquor store demos target the consumer in a place where they can take action right away, and they are in an environment where they are likely to remember rather than being drunk.

We as bloggers can learn from this.  People “driving by” and people not look buy aren’t likely to convert.  People who have already taken action (signing up for a newsletter) or  someone coming to a page for information about a product are ready to buy at some level.

The biggest mistake I’ve made for making money blogging is hoping ads will convert.  For huge sites they might some, but reviews and recommendations work infinitely better.

John Chow makes $40,000+/month basically reviewing products and building hype via newsletter.  He doesn’t even try to hide that’s what he does.  There is balance though.  Not every post is a call to action.  Many are tips or industry news, and that’s what builds the following of people who trust him and are ready to take action.

If you get nothing else from this, take this: build trust via interaction and free assistance then make a clear call to action when your audience can act.

Image Credit: Image taken from Tinypic Free Image Hosting

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